Meet Jesse Kelly (R Cand, AZ-08).

AZ-04 is a R+4 district: its current holder (Gabrielle Giffords) picked up the seat as part of the 2006 shellacking. In time-honored Blue Dog fashion, she’s handling the health care rationing controversy by hiding from it: Giffords abruptly canceled two Thursday meetings by ‘combining’ them into a RSVP-only whatever-it-was at a military base. Fairly typical behavior, in other words.

It’s the weirdest thing, but it seems that the best way to handle a confrontational situation is not to run away, Giffords’ example to the contrary. I’d recommend that the Democrats emulate Kelly’s example when faced with a person who’s loudly disagreeing with them, except that would be cruel of me: the reason that they’re running away is because they can’t win this on the merits, and they know it.

Moving along: to the best of my knowledge, the national party hasn’t made a decision yet on who best to foster in AZ-08 (which is reasonable: this is the season for making those decisions). If somebody else on the GOP side of this race has got something that can beat or match the above, though… well, now’s the time to show it.